"Take, for example, videos of recent protests in Libya," Jeremy Doig, Google's director of video technology, said in blog post last night.

"Although emotionally captivating, they can be jerky, blurry or unsteady. What if there was a technology that could improve the quality of such videos - sharpening the image, reducing visual noise and rendering a higher-quality, steadier video - all while your video is simply being uploaded to the site?"

It said Green Parrot Pictures could do "exactly this".

The small firm was found in 2004 as a Trinity College Dublin spin-out venture and its CEO, Professsor Anil Kokaram, still also works at the university. He has researched video processing technologies for 20 years, and his work has been put to use on Hollywood blockbusters including the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Spider-Man and Casino Royale.